…tell him your plans. That old saying was underlined yesterday in Los Cristianos when a shower of soot from a Naviera Armas ferry funnel caused the closure of the old beach for an hour, while Las Vistas beach was undergoing a high profile clean up by volunteers. The problem happened when instead of the normal smoke billowing out of the ferry funnel, a cloud of soot blew out and landed in the sea.

“Oh no, it’s Sooty in the sea” the sun worshippers cried, and before you could say Izzy Wizzy, lets get busy, people had dived in to save the poor bear, only to quickly realise their mistake. The police ordered a sweep of bathers off the beach while the offending soot dispersed, and through the port authority, they will be asking the ferry company for a good explanation.

Meanwhile on the other side of Los Cristianos, the early morning beach clean up had started, with a team of volunteers, backed by local diving schools and Arona councils very commendable programme to keep all the beaches in their area clean and safe. As part of the days programme, the Fundacion Neotropico, that restores injured turtles to good health, released some healthy creatures back into the water.

The soot incident was very unfortunate and couldn’t have happened on a worse day, but at least it was just a short interuption and may even have drawn attention to the good work being done on the larger beach next door.

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